Sunday, October 26, 2008

I have been in Germany for about a month and a half now. I really can't believe it. Time is going really fast. This year will go by really fast. But i feel like im not making much progress with the langauge. I can understand a little but not enough to hold a conversation. AFS told us that we would be "fluent within 3-4 months". thats complete crap. I have started going through the dictionary and picking out important words to help build my vocabulary. I think the thing that confuses me the most is the articles and word order.

Before each noun, there is an article (der-Masculine, die-feminine, or das-neuter....die-plural). And you have to memorize it for each word. In english, its just "the". Thats it. I have become pretty good at guessing the articles though. Im not sure why. There are some patterns but there are enough exception to make them useless. It kind of like that "I before E except after C" thing. Everybody says it but it is rarely true.Then after memorizing all of these articles for every noun, they change. There are 4 differnt cases in the German language. Nominative, Akkusative, Dative, Genitive.For each case, the articles changes. For each article, there are 4 things it can change to! So 16! For example. In the Akkusative case, der changes to den. in Dative, der changes to dem.Its not to hard to memorize all of these but its hard to figure out what to change it to when you don't understand the language!Indefinite articles change (a). So do the endings of adjectives depending what case it is using...Word order is also difficult as well but i'm hoping it will come with time.

There are some good things about the german langauge. Well...i can only think of one!There are many words the resemble english words.. (cognates i think?) For example. testen meens to test. die Katze- Cat. die Maus- Mouse. Sometimes it makes memorizing words extremely easy. There are also big words in german that look complicated but if you break them down, they make sense. verantwortlichkeit meens responsibility. but literaly it meens responsible ability. thats not the best example and there are plenty more but i cant think of them now.

Train Ride to Magdeburg

I didnt have school this week. Instead i went to Magdeburg with leo everyday to a bloodbank in a university. Maybe i will write about it in a few days. I will also post a picture of Sylvia (hostmother) in a bavarian dress before she went to an oktober fest celebration.

Sunday, October 12, 2008

School started last monday. I went to my first class expecting people to say hi to me or approach me in anyway. which was the opposite of what happend. Before school leo had said that everyone was really excited to meet me and kept asking about when i would come but when i got there, it was like i didn't exist. The first day kind of sucked.

Tuesday wasn't really to much better.

I didnt have classes on wednesday because there was "sportfest". Instead of going to school, you go to a track and just do events and get graded for it all day long. They didn't have pole vaulting though which was disapointing because thats the only event im really good in.People did talk to me though! It was pretty cool. It was a mixture of german and english and it worked out ok.

In case anybody is wondering, german is not coming along very well. I cant understand anything going on in class and only sometimes do i understand what people are actually saying to me. And im trying really hard too!

Here is my schedule:

Monday- 90 minutes Physics, 45 homeroom, 90 politics, 90 latin

Tuesday- 45 Latin, 90 german with 5th graders, 90 Bio, 90 Religion

Wednesday- 90 Math, 90 german with 5th graders, 90 english, 45 Latin

Thursday- 90 Phycology, (what would be a 10th grade german class. 90 minutes free) plus there is a 45 minute break after those perriods so i go home for 2 hours. 90 minutes english, 90 minutes gym.

I have off all next week because of fall break so i'm not sure what ill be doing. Then they week after everybody in class is going to Magdeburg to do internships((kind of). So i don't have shcool for the next 2 weeks. This will give me time to learn the trig that we are learning in math class!

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Last weekend i went to an AFS camp. I expected it would be extremely boring and pointless, which for the most part it was. But it was cool meeting all the people from differnt countrys. There were 18 kids there and most of them we're from differnt countrys. Of course english was the common language between everyone so that is what we spoke.

Me and 3 other people stumbled across some Midevil festival. It was kind of awesome.

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

hey guys. i haven't posted in a while but i had an AFS camp over the weekend and i just started school. I will make a post maybe tomorrow or the next day but i will eventualy get to it. I have been really busy... gute nacht